Long before human beings came into existence God and Satan fought a battle for control over the heavens. We all know who won that battle, and in the bible we're told how it all happened, but according to John A. De Vito it was all a lie. De Vito has supposedly uncovered documents that his great-grand uncle wrote after having an experience with Lucifer and seeking out 3 mad prophets. The documents tell Lucifer's side of the story, how Lucifer fought to give humans free will when all God wanted to do was breed mindless drones so that he could live of the "savor" of their faith.

I had heard a lot about this book on the Internet, supposedly there are even people out there who have created a new church based on it. So, I just had to read it and see what all the fuss was about. I was expecting a sort of psychological thriller as De Vito's great-grand uncle (who is a Catholic priest before his encounter with Lucifer) hears some alternative version of events and faces some sort of internal struggle; but, that's not what this is at all. Actually, all Lucifer has to do is appear to De Vito's ancestor as a glowing, tall, blond, nordic with discrete little horns to immediately convince the priest that Lucifer is actually the good guy. (Note to Lucifer: if you want people to immediately drop their beliefs and follow you, just look pretty and glow).

All this book is, is De Vito pretending to have found some interesting documents and then, rather than writing a compelling work of fiction, spins together a few chapters of pseudo-science with pseudo-spirituality then proceeds to rewrite sections of the new and old testament, spinning them so that God looks mean and evil and Lucifer looks like a bleeding heart philosopher.

The first part of the book was supposed to describe energy beings (God, Satan, and all the other Angels and demons) coming into our world using a black hole or "black mass" because their own universe is going through a big crunch (what scientists predict will happen if gravity eventually takes over and collapses the universe in on itself). The energy beings find that in our universe they can only survive if they feed off the faith of sentient beings. So, they use their knowledge of Calculus and Math to engineer a race of people (us) to use as faith-food. This is where God and Satan have their initial disagreements.

The idea of mixing science with a creation story in this way sounds interesting, but De Vito just doesn't pull it off. Though he uses scientific jargon and vocabulary in his dialog everything he says is about as convincing as the script for a Saturday morning Space Ranger cartoon aimed at 5 year olds. A demon says, "oh no, we can't do anything," Lucifer says, "ah yes, but what if we use the Magica of Calculus," and the demon replies, "oh yes, that will work, we can do something." Perhaps this annoys me more because I am a scientist and I know what words like Calculus and Black Holes actually mean, but the worst part is that throughout the story DeVito's logic is inconsistent with itself. One instant you can't do something, then the next, one of his characters uses scientific jargon in their dialog and all of the sudden they can do that thing. I believe that good speculative fiction should create a set of rules for how their universe works, and should be able to stick to those rules without suddenly changing them just to make the plot progress--De Vito changes his own rules at a whim. I would be more forgiving on this point if the story were character driven rather than constructed for the sole purpose of creating a creation story that is supposed to be consistent with modern science.

In the next part of the book DeVito attempts to rewrite sections of the new and old testament from the point of view of his good-guy Satan. Most of this part of the book is just down right boring and it was a struggle to get through it. Also, De Vito's attempt to make it all sound biblical is not only annoying to read, but it's also inconsistent with the supposed history of the documents, which were supposed to have been written not more than 100 years ago. His great-grand uncle is not far enough in the past for his writing to sound like a King James edition bible. For the love of God (pardon the expression) just drop the "thou art"s.

Though this book just doesn't measure up as a work of fiction, it is very marketable to the Gothic and Satanist crowd or those with a grudge against Christianity or Christians. I have to give him 5 stars for that. Billing the book as having come from real documents is what is selling this book, and apparently has made some poor souls out there think this is "real". Making consumers think this book is real is the only way anything in it would be compelling. Personally, I'm not sure if I could sleep at night knowing that I had invented from my imagination a dogma and engineered it so that I could get people to follow it. In this respect, DeVito has become something like his own mean, nasty God.

P.S. I found an early interview with De Vito on the web where he states he got the idea to write this book after hearing about a book that made Hitler look like a good guy. It is all fiction. It is not real. There are no mad prophets. Please, if you read this book, don't spend your life thinking it is real.